The German chancellor bestrides Europe like a colossus. She sets economic policy for the 18-nation eurozone. She says “If the euro goes, Europe goes”, by which she means that the currency’s value favors German exports to her eurozone partners, and makes it more difficult for them to sell their olives, wine and cars in Germany. Europe trembles on brink of deflation while she insists on snuffing out any sign of inflation that rears its — to Germans — historically terrifying ugly head. Her fellow eurlanders, quite sensibly, according to many economists, fear the growth-stifling effects of deflation and rather hope to see a bit of inflation in their near-term futures. Merkel tells Greece how many civil servants it may have, how to levy and collect taxes, and how to restructure its labor market, all the while ignoring their demands for repayment of the loans one of her long-ago predecessors imposed on them. France can run deficits in excess of 3% of GDP because Angela Merkel “suggests” to the Brussels bureaucracy to temper its justice with mercy, a boon she declined to extend to Ireland, Portugal or Spain. She leads negotiations with Vladimir Putin, making certain that sanctions do not bite too deeply into her country’s sales to and investments in the New Russia. Angel Merkel, the iron hausfrau, is on a roll.
But she can’t cope with Frankfurt’s pigeons or the coming onslaught of Americans, as we once again hit the beaches of Europe, this time armed with sunscreen and dollars. First, the pigeons. The Wall Street Journal reports that Frankfurt’s pigeons have virtually taken over that city’s rail station. Rather like the flying vermin have taken over Trafalgar and St. Mark’s Squares. But also different — these birds appear in droves three stories underground, in commuter corridors, buzzing passengers on escalators, and settling in kiosks deep underground. And giving such as station manager Gudrun Stürmer an opening for a bit of leftish cant: “People don’t like them because they’re so much like us,” she says. “They’re hungry and there are many of them.” In Merkel’s super-prosperous Germany, the economic engine of Europe? Surely an overstatement with which the Chancellor must disagree.
But there is no “perhaps” about the coming invasion of American tourists. Just follow the money: the mighty dollar has made European vacations a bargain for Americans. So the Americans are coming. Which bodes ill for the Germans who are accustomed to storming the beaches early in the morning, tossing down their towels to reserve the best spots before very irritated Spaniards and Frenchmen and their families show up. One of our souvenirs from years in Europe is a large beach towel distributed by a leading tabloid, with a screaming headline printed on it, “I got here before the Germans.” Which few European tourists, given to late-night reveling, ever succeed in doing. But history teaches that Americans approach the beaches of Europe a bit more purposefully than do Europeans, and that Germans are not especially successful in heading them off.
